Recently we’ve received some questions about the Robutrad investigation – questions, I assume, that have arisen because of the current investigation into county-connected local development corporations, or LDCs.

Robutrad, you may recall, was the corporation set up for trades workers who were contracted by Monroe County. The arrangement worked out well, with the county saving money and the trades workers having steady work, until the laborers started doing jobs for family, friends and the politically connected.

Those jobs wouldn’t have been a problem, except that the Robutrad crew did the work while on the clock for the county. More than a dozen were charged with crimes, and most pleaded guilty. (Some, claiming their lapses in judgment were the offspring of addictions, completed a court-ordered treatment program and had the charges dismissed.)

The question that we’ve heard recently is not a new one: What about the folks the laborers did work for? Why weren’t they criminally charged?

During the months before the November 1993 Brinks arrests, and even in the months between then and the 1994 trial, suspect Tom O’Connor was under regular surveillance from the FBI and Rochester police involved in the investigation.

One day, a car left O’Connor’s Irondequoit home, without O’Connor visible to the surveillance squad. Still, some investigators were suspicious, and followed the car and its driver downtown. The car pulled into Pindle Alley, as some police watched from a distance.

The driver popped open the trunk, and out popped O’Connor – the retired Rochester police officer who, as a Brinks security guard, was suspected to be the inside man with the robbery. (He would be acquitted at trial – part of the story we’ll reach in coming weeks. More on that with next installment.)

O’Connor walked down Pindle Alley to a bank on West Main Street. There, he spotted a Rochester officer whom he knew.

A married couple – Jonathan Neufeld, 59, and Christina Starkbaum, 57 – were among those accused.

The couple were alleged to have deposited $824,635 – money that was supposedly an offspring of the fraud – in a Brockport bank in May 2010. They then allegedly transferred via wire $123,700 of that to a Toronto bank 10 days later.

This week the couple killed themselves at their home in the Town of Pelham, Ontario, Canada. According to the Thorold Niagara News, the couple were found dead in woods near their home after apparently agreeing to a suicide pact. I learned of the suicides in an email from someone who sent me a Canadian news story about the deaths.

With a month to go before a scheduled September Brinks trial date, another attorney dropped out.

Patrick Wall, a New York City lawyer representing Charles McCormick, had unsuccessfully attempted to get McCormick tried separately in New York City. A sole practitioner, Wall decided he could not afford the time necessary for a one-to-two month trial in Rochester.

Plus, Wall said, McCormick had no funds and would probably be eligible for court-assigned defense.

In his letter to the court asking to be removed, Wall said that the change in attorney should not be disruptive to the trial’s start or the defense for McCormick. While the other three defendants faced a host of allegations, the accusations against McCormick were “extremely narrow,” Wall wrote.

The question that the jury would confront was “did (McCormick) knowingly receive money taken in the Brinks robbery in Rochester and found in his apartment some eleven months later,” Wall said.

Lawyer Stanley Cohen’s request to be removed as attorney for the Rev. Patrick Moloney prompted U.S. District Judge David Larimer to hold a hearing – and have backup defense in place if needed for Moloney.

The hearing ended up being by phone, with Cohen and Moloney – who’d been told not to travel because of a heart ailment – on a conference call from New York City. Larimer had hoped the hearing would clear up whether Moloney could afford an attorney. However, the Melkite Order priest managed to muddy the question.

Asked whether he could afford an attorney, Moloney launched into an impassioned plea for the return of some records seized from his home. He also maintained that he could not get a fair trial in Rochester.

“That is an interesting speech,” Larimer answered, “but what does that have to do with my question about your ability to pay a lawyer?”

Moloney explained that the records had the names of friends and others he’d met through his work who might help him pay legal fees.

With only months before the impending trial, the attorney for Rev. Patrick Moloney had a problem – well, two of them.

First, lawyer Stanley Cohen, based in New York City, had been hit by severe asthma that was impeding his ability to spend the necessary hours on the Brinks case.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, he wasn’t getting paid a whole lot of money.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge David Larimer, Cohen explained his difficulties defending Moloney. He estimated that he’d already done the equivalent of $74,000 worth of legal work and had been paid about 10 percent of that.

In essence, Cohen said, he was working pro bono.

When he assumed the defense of Moloney, Cohen had felt certain there would be a series of fundraisers for the Melkite Order priest that would cover much of the legal cost. As an advocate for the impoverished in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Moloney was fairly well known.

With trial approaching, both the prosecutors and defense worked to bolster their cases.

Federal prosecutors requested a saliva sample from the Rev. Patrick Moloney, to compare with evidence connected to the Brinks robbery. Moloney’s attorney objected, but a judge allowed the sample.

(I’m unsure from the official record and from people knowledgeable about the case just what the saliva sample was for. Obviously, as records show, the objective was to compare Moloney’s DNA with some crime scene evidence. But what that evidence was, I can’t say. It did not come out at trial.)

Meanwhile, attorney Felix Lapine, representing Tom O’Connor, was building a defense around what he saw as holes in the prosecution’s case. He also recognized that the security at the depot had been amazingly lax, especially for an operation housing millions of dollars.

With that in mind, Lapine asked to visit the South Avenue depot with O’Connor, so they could discuss the operation’s vulnerabilities and show how easy it would be to rob Brinks. The point: That the robbers did not need sophisticated inside knowledge and the help of an employee, like O’Connor, as prosecutors claimed.

When a federal grand jury in May 1994 indicted Charles McCormick for Brinks-related crimes, it did so in a new indictment that also again charged the three earlier accused: Brinks guard Tom O’Connor, Samuel Ignatius Millar, and the Rev. Patrick Moloney.

Those new charges, contained in what’s called a “superseding indictment,” did not advance the case much. Most of the allegations against the previously accused were identical to the earlier accusations, except for some claims that they’d apparently come into cash after the robbery.

In late May 1994 the Brinks criminal case grew from three defendants to four: Charles McCormick, who’d rented the apartment where $2 million was found, was charged with a conspiracy to possess the Brinks cash.

But during the months that followed, authorities amassed what they believed was substantive proof that McCormick had been involved in the crime. As would be discovered later, the evidence wasn’t substantive and could be explained.

Shortly after his indictment and release on a $50,000 bail package, McCormick asked to be tried separately in New York City. (The motion would be denied.)

In court filings, McCormick conceded that the Manhattan apartment where the $2 million was found was his. But, he noted, he sublet the apartment to a codefendant, the Rev. Patrick Moloney, in July 1993, and never stayed another night there.

California’s own “double initial” killer was convicted this week, and now faces a possible execution.

Joseph Naso

The murderer, 79-year-old Joseph Naso, was not referred to as a “double initial” killer by California authorities. That was a media construct, authorities there admit, because of Naso’s victims. The first and last name of each of his four victims began with the same letter.

That coincidence, assuming it was one, resonated with Rochester residents because of the traumatic “double initial” slayings here in the early 1970s in which three young girls were killed. Like Naso’s victims, they also had alliterative names.

Those killings rocked the community, causing parents to questions whether the streets were safe for their youngsters.

Loyal readers (I know there are a few of you), I’m reaching out to you on two fronts.

One is to remind you to send me ideas – silly, serious, in between – about what you think happened to the missing $5 million in the Brinks robbery. I’ve gotten a handful, and we still probably have a month before I use some in a posting, but I’m always looking for more. Send them to my email at gcraig@democratandchronicle.com or comment on this posting.

Second, as I said earlier, I plan to do a daily installment for each day of the Brinks trial. This is requiring a good amount of research and revisiting court records, as you can imagine, and I want to ensure it’s worth your time in the end. Also as I mentioned earlier, I’ve established a format for the daily installments. This, I admit, was to make my workload a little easier.

So, below is one example of what you’d read in the daily trial coverage. My worry is that utilizing the same format daily might lead to tedium for readers, and, of course, I want to avoid that. So let me know what you think – namely, are you likely to read five weeks of daily installments in this format (with different news each day, of course) or would you get bored of the same daily approach?

This has been a frequent issue with the Brinks blog, as I’ve worked to recreate events that happened years ago – some as long as 40 years ago.

For instance, in 1993, when Samuel Ignatius Millar was arrested in connection with the Brinks robbery, we learned that he was a former Irish Republican Army rebel living illegally and running a comics store in New York City. Court documents and news accounts from here and the United Kingdom spelled out more about his IRA-connected crimes, but did not present a complete picture.

Ten years later, after being convicted and serving time for his role in the $7.4 million Brinks heist, Millar wrote a memoir – On The Brinks – in which he discussed his IRA-related convictions and his harrowing stint of incarceration at Long Kesh prison. In the book, Millar somewhat skirts the facts of his crimes, but still provides enough information to help flesh out the picture.

Now, another decade later, here I am, trying to mesh what information I have into a fuller portrayal of the young and headstrong IRA guerilla and his offenses committed in the hopes of an independent Northern Ireland.

Three weeks after the occupants of a Volkwagen van sprinted away from a police stop, a British security officer became suspicious of a red Ford Cortina Estate – a small station wagon – parked with a wheel upon a sidewalk on a Belfast street.

The officer questioned the man and searched him, finding nothing more than the car keys and a pair of black gloves. The man had no license or insurance for the car, saying he had “collected it” to move it somewhere and only expected to drive it for five or ten minutes, according to a 1976 police report.

Transported to a nearby station of the Royal Ulster Constabulary – the security service patrolling Northern Ireland during those volatile years – the man admitted his identity. He also acknowledged that the police may be looking for him, ever since he’d run from the van that had been carrying firearms and bomb-building materials.

“All right, my name is Sammy Millar,” he told the officer. “You boys are looking for me having some guns.”

On Feb. 5, 1976, a British security officer in Belfast spotted an orange Volkswagen van speeding down a roadway.

He pulled alongside the van, and signalled for it to pull over. He told the driver to step out, and asked for a license.

“I then asked his front seat passenger to get out of the van and he did so,” according to a police report from the stop. Three other men in the back of the van stepped out, appearing to be cooperative at first.

Then they took off running.

One man “body checked me and knocked me to the ground,” the officer wrote. Later, trying to identify those in the van, the officer looked at a photo lineup. He picked out a photo as the front seat passenger – the teenager Samual Ignatius Millar.

There was a good reason police wanted to know who was in the van. Inside they found firearms, ammunition, and materials for explosives, including electric detonators and nitroglycerine.

Millar was later convicted for his role in transporting ammunition and explosives for the Irish Republican Army, and sentenced to Long Kesh prison.

The Belfast City Commission wants to ensure that I can’t build a bomb.

When I sought Sam Millar’s criminal records from Northern Ireland, bombmaking was not what I had in mind. Apparently, however, the criminal records include some specific details about explosives either constructed or carried by Millar.

As I’ve noted before, months ago I wrote to courts in Northern Ireland, seeking records about Millar’s crimes. With a hospitality I’m unaccustomed to dealing with here in the States, officials there converted my letter into a formal Freedom of Information request for the documents. (Meanwhile, here in the U.S. I am waiting for response from both a state and a federal agency to questions asked weeks ago that shouldn’t be that hard to answer. They have nothing to do with this story, but I’ll vent here nonetheless.)

The response from Belfast came back last week, with a detailed accounting of why some materials will be withheld – namely, so I can’t learn how to construct a bomb.

Damien’s daughter, Joanne McClinton, had read a recent Brinks blog posting of mine. “I was wondering did you find out anything else relating to my Dad’s case,” Joanne wrote to me in an email from her home in Belfast.

It has been several years – maybe as many as five – since Joanne and I last spoke. In these blogs, I’ve occasionally mentioned the killing of Damien McClinton, who was fatally shot in December 1987 while working security at a Genesee Brewery distribution warehouse.

Rochester Brinks depot heist updates

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The Democrat and Chronicle takes its watchdog responsibilities seriously and believes officials of all stripes should be held accountable. We want to use this blog to keep our audience updated on public service journalism at home and across the nation. And we would like to invite you to join our conversation whenever you are moved to comment or share an idea you have about investigative journalism.

Gary Craig was previously a reporter with the now-defunct Rochester Times-Union, where he covered City Hall and politics. His focus for much of the past decade has been on criminal justice issues. He has won regional, state and national journalism awards, including honors from Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Headliners Awards. His career has taken him to prison riots, national political conventions, and the cockpit of a biplane flying upside down over the Chesapeake Bay. Few of those moments were as memorable as one of his early days at his first newspaper, the Farmville (Va) Herald, a day in which he covered both a chicken house fire and the birth of twin calves. He and his wife, Charlotte, live in Brighton and are the parents of two daughters, neither of whom showed the least bit of interest in journalism as a career.

Sean Lahman is the Democrat and Chronicle’s database specialist. Prior to joining the staff, he was a reporter with the New York Sun, and served as an editor of a number of best-selling sports encyclopedias – including Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball and The ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia. Lahman’s 2008 book, The Pro Football Historical Abstract, was called "the best football book of the decade" by the Pro Football Researchers Association. He is perhaps best known for creating the popular Lahman Baseball database, an open source collection of baseball statistics. Lahman attended the University of Cincinnati and lives in Irondequoit. In lieu of hobbies, he has three teenage kids.

Meaghan McDermott has been with the Democrat and Chronicle since 1998, and has come close to reaching her one-time goal of being assigned as a beat reporter to cover each of Monroe County's suburban towns and villages.
Since 2006, her focus has been on the Town of Greece and the Greece Central School District. Her work there, including reporting on financial waste and abuse in an early 2000s schools construction project and corruption in the Greece Police Department, has been recognized with state journalism awards. Over the years, she's also looked into topics such as into the safety conditions of local roadway bridges, school superintendent salaries and perks, teacher pay, teacher discipline, town and village employee pay and overtime and how a spree killer ended up with a pistol permit despite his prior arrests.

Dick Moss is investigations editor at the Democrat and Chronicle and his duties include guiding the public service investigations team. Moss has bounced around among half a dozen editing jobs at the Democrat and Chronicle since 1987, when he started in Rochester as a copy editor. His longest stint was as the newsroom's copy desk chief from 1996 to 2005. He is a 1980 graduate of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. -- where he studied under muckraking journalist Clark Mollenhoff -- and worked as a reporter and editor at several smaller newspapers in Virginia and New York state before joining the Democrat and Chronicle. His academic degrees include a diploma from the Beehive Kindergarten in Flushing, N.Y., that claims he plays well with others. "The sandbox was my favorite playtime activity," Moss says. "I've enjoyed digging in the dirt ever since."

Steve Orr has been a reporter at the Democrat and Chronicle since 1981, and has covered a wide variety of local topics. Over the years he also has looked into, among other things, chemical contamination at the former Kodak Park, sewer tunnel construction snafus, airport construction issues, baseball-stadium construction problems, the troubled life of a man accused of impregnating a comatose nursing home patient, the troubled life and death of a suspected serial killer, railroad crossing safety, the death of a troubled loner while under government care, suburban development trends, crime trends, a suburban property scam, an rigged appraisal-assessment scam, and a scam to cheat institutions out of millions of dollars in nickels, dimes and quarters. He originated the newspaper's computer and Internet column and wrote it weekly for a decade, and also is a former weather and climate columnist. At present Orr focuses on environmental issues. Contact: E-mail | Phone (585) 258-2386 | Twitter.com/SOrr1 | Facebook.com/SteveOrrROC

David Riley joined the Democrat and Chronicle’s watchdog team in 2013. An upstate New York native, he has worked as a journalist for a decade from the Hudson Valley to Greater Boston. Most recently, he was a regional reporter and editor for GateHouse Media in eastern Massachusetts, where he focused on data-driven reporting and wrote stories about everything from state government to the Boston Marathon bombing. He has won regional journalism awards for his coverage of police cameras that scan license plates, river pollution and rapid development in a small town, among other topics. In pursuit of stories over the years, he has attempted to shoot video while riding a bike, fled swarming bees and has been asked to leave numerous parking lots. A SUNY Albany graduate, he lives in Rochester with his wife.